NPD: HP beats Samsung in tablet sales

Hewlett-Packard, which recently discontinued its TouchPad tablets, took the top spot among tablet vendors behind Apple's iPad this year through October, according to research from NPD.

HP had 17 percent of non-Apple tablet retail sales, from January through October, just barely beating Samsung, which had 16 percent of non-iPad sales, NPD found.

Apple dominates the tablet market and many other manufacturers, like Samsung, have been working hard to get a foothold in the market.

Yet HP managed to best the others even after deciding to exit the tablet market. Earlier this year HP announced it would quit making its TouchPad tablets and drastically reduced the price in order to work through inventory. Since the TouchPad wasn't nearly as popular before the price cut, it appears the low price drove the tablet to the top of the pack.

Behind Samsung, Asus had 10 percent of the non-Apple tablet market, followed by Motorola and Acer with 9 percent each.

Combined, the manufacturers sold just 1.2 million tablets from January through October, bringing in US$415 million in revenue, NPD said. Sales increased at a healthy clip as the year progressed. Second-quarter sales were three times better than the first, and third-quarter sales were two times that of the second, NPD found.

Analysts expect the iPad to account for around 65 percent of the tablet market in 2011. Apple has sold 25 million iPads this year.

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